-The Hindu The deaths of Chaiti Bai and other women after a botched tubectomy in Chhattisgarh are an opportunity to reflect on the problems India faces in the pursuit of modernity and global status, especially in health and education A sudden death always has great pedagogical value. The death of Chaiti Bai, a Baiga tribal woman, following a botched tubectomy at a mass sterilisation camp in Chhattisgarh recently, can improve our perspective...
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Job scheme budget-cut plan sparks alarm -Basant Kumar Mohanty
-The Telegraph The finance ministry has decided to shave Rs 3,000 crore, or about nine per cent, off the rural job guarantee scheme's budget allocation, government sources told The Telegraph. The move comes at a time the NDA government has been trying to assuage the fears of the Opposition and social activists that it plans to dilute the programme, introduced by the UPA government. This year's budget allocation for the programme was Rs...
More »SCs, STs form less that 10% of Central higher bureaucracy, says Personnel Dept
-The Hindu Business Line Despite long years of affirmative action in India, the higher bureaucracy at the Centre has less than 10 per cent representation from the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), and not a single one from Other Backward Classes (OBC). Higher bureaucracy refers to officers at the level of Secretary, Special Secretary, Additional Secretary and Joint Secretary. According to a written reply by the Department of Personnel and...
More »8 yrs after Sachar, Muslims still out of Govt jobs and schools: Panel -Abantika Ghosh
-The Indian Express Eight years after the Sachar committee report on the condition of Muslims and creation of a Ministry of Minority Affairs, a post-Sachar evaluation committee, headed by former JNU professor Amitabh Kundu, has concluded that though a start has been made in addressing development deficits of the community, government interventions have not quite matched in scale the large numbers of the marginalised. Poverty levels among Muslims, the committee found, remained...
More »Getting them back to school
-The Hindu A survey commissioned by the Ministry of Human Resource Development simplistically records poverty and academic disinterest as major reasons for children dropping out of school. A survey commissioned by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, in September shows that out of the estimated 20.41 crore children in the age group of 6-13 in India, an estimated 60.41 lakh (2.97 per cent) are out of school. This proportion of out-of-school children...
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